MEXICO CITY — Ann Brandt, a 66-year-old fiction writer in Mexico, last cast a presidential ballot for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Roxanne Bachmann, 52, a voice-over artist in Spain, has never voted in her native America. Nor has David Stern, a 38-year-old graphic designer who moved to Israel two decades ago.
But all three U.S. citizens and hundreds of thousands of others who live abroad have demanded absentee ballots for the Nov. 2 presidential election, stirred by a partisan sense of urgency that surpasses anything veteran U.S. political activists in many countries say they have ever witnessed.
Democratic and Republican organizers say the upsurge in registration abroad has burdened an already unwieldy system of absentee voting, causing frustration among the many overseas Americans who have yet to receive ballots from their home states.
"Everything about this election is triple the size of elections before," said Zachary Miller, executive vice chairman of Democrats Abroad France, who has lived in Paris for 14 years. "We usually have registration drives, but this time we have people coming to us -- people who have been here 20 or 30 years and never voted before."
Party preferences of Americans abroad are as hard to measure as their precise numbers, estimated to be at least 4 million civilians plus about 550,000 military personnel and dependents. But supporters of President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry, say the divide between the expatriate camps is as razor-sharp as it is at home, and focused more acutely on issues of foreign policy and the United States' standing in the world.
"This is the time to stand up and be counted if there ever was one," Brandt said. Driven by anger over the war in Iraq, she and Bachmann intend to mail in Florida ballots for Kerry. Bachmann said antiwar sentiment among her Spanish friends, "who are all against Bush," has bolstered her own.
Stern will mark his Ohio ballot for Bush. "It's critical for the whole world," he said. "America is taking the lead in the battle against terrorism, defending the security of the whole world."
Voters like them are being courted aggressively. Party organizers have been busy nearly everywhere Americans gather overseas -- American bookstores and cafes, expatriate clubs, universities, movie theaters showing "Fahrenheit 9/11," the Lake Chapala Chili Cook-Off in Mexico, Gay Pride weekend in Toronto, a golf tournament in Vietnam.
